IMF Research Bulletin

Issue Number

Latest documents

• Housing Strikes Back: Remaining Attuned to Risks

  It’s déjà vu all over again! House prices are going through the roof in major cities across the globe, reviving memories of the US boom that ended in a global financial meltdown.1 They are also raising concern about affordability, with millennials increasingly priced out and at risk of turning into "forever renters.

• Tariffs in a Globalized World
• Policymaking: New Frontiers Using Big Data

  In our previous issue, we flashed how the wave of big data has been a game changer in the past decade and what new avenues it can open for the field of economics. More important (if you are a policymaker), the large pool of information available digitally can provide new tools to guide and support policy decisions. The capability to produce new indicators, tackle official data time lags, and support forecasting can be vital for increasing the speed of inception and implementation in policymaking. A wide array of projects at the IMF has recently aimed to explore the potential in this area.

• A World with Central Bank Digital Currencies
• The 19th Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference: A Note from the Organizer
• Note from the guest editor
• Adieu to Maury

  Maurice (Maury) Obstfeld, our chief economist and RES Director, is retiring at the end of the year after more than three years on the job. His time here has been marked by many achievements, of which this short column can only elucidate a couple, while conveying some of the more personal and intangible aspects that we learned about him and that have influenced IMF staff over his tenure.

• Frontiers of Monetary Policy: Interview with Doug Laxton on the new book Advancing the Frontiers of Monetary Policy with Tobias Adrian and Maurice Obstfeld

  Since the global financial crisis, the scope of central banking has expanded and new challenges have arisen. Marika Santoro interviews Doug Laxton, one of the authors of the IMF book Advancing the Frontiers of Monetary Policy. In their discussion, Doug will guide us through the development of new tools and frameworks at central banks. The conversation will also review central banks’ communication strategies and how transparency has become key in managing expectations and engendering macroeconomic stability.

• Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis: Interview with Valerie Cerra

  The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08 was the worst to hit the world economy since the Great Depression. The Crisis devastated the financial markets, brought the housing and banking sectors to their knees, and caused political upheaval in both the developed and developing world. Ten years on from those events, Hites Ahir talks to Valerie Cerra, Assistant Director in the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development, about why some countries still haven’t been able to fully recover, what are the implications of recessions and crises for policymaking, and the new stylized model for economic development.

• The rise of populism: is it really the economy stupid?

  A quick read of the news would have you believe that populism is on the rise following the Great Recession. At the same time, concerns about inequality loom over policy debates and discussions have focused on the merits and disadvantages of globalization and how certain groups in society have become vulnerable to technological progress. Are these causes related to the rise in populism?.

Featured documents

• Monetary Policy Cyclicality in Emerging Markets

  Does monetary policy help smooth or amplify economic cycles? In most advanced markets monetary policy helps smooth cycles. However, for emerging markets, procyclical monetary policy has been a problem, with macroeconomic policies amplifying economic upswings and deepening downturns. This article...

• The Quest for Stability in Housing Markets

  Recent developments in global house prices have led to seemingly contradictory concerns about both overheating and slow recovery, reflecting house price booms in some countries and declining prices in others. This note discusses developments in global housing markets since the Great Recession-...

• Q&A: Seven Questions on Estimating the Monetary Transmission Mechanism in Low-Income Countries

  The use of conventional vector auto-regression (VAR)-based methods to identify the monetary transmission mechanism (MTM) in low income countries suggests the MTM may be weaker and less reliable than in advanced and emerging market economies. But are structural VARs identified via short-run...

• Reforming Dual Labor Markets In Advanced Economies

  Labor market duality has increased dramatically in many advanced countries in recent years. While duality has some positive aspects, microeconomic and cross-country studies suggest that an excessive reliance on “non-regular” employment has a negative impact on total factor productivity (TFP) and...

• Winning the Oil Lottery: The Impact of Natural Resource Extraction on Growth

  This summary provides evidence of the causal impact of oil discoveries on development. Novel data on the drilling of 20,000 oil wells in Brazil allows us to exploit a quasiexperiment. Municipalities where oil was discovered constitute the treatment group, while municipalities with drilling but no...

• Q&A: Seven Questions on Islamic Finance

  Although still a small share of global finance, Islamic finance has grown rapidly over the past decade and is projected to continue to expand. The growth of Islamic finance presents opportunities to improve access to finance for the large underserved Muslim populations, and for small- and medium-siz...

• Policymaking: New Frontiers Using Big Data

  In our previous issue, we flashed how the wave of big data has been a game changer in the past decade and what new avenues it can open for the field of economics. More important (if you are a policymaker), the large pool of information available digitally can provide new tools to guide and support...

• IMF Working Papers
• A Primer on 'Global Liquidity

  Global liquidity" is often used to describe the impact of low U.S. and euro area interest rates on the rest of the world. The concept is critical for understanding the global financial cycle and international spillovers. This column defines global liquidity as the ease of financing in cross-bor...

• Trade Integration and Business Cycle Synchronization

  Over the past two decades, trade integration has increased rapidly within the world economy and tight supply chain networks have been formed, particularly within Asia. Have these developments strengthened the propagation of shocks, and more broadly the synchronization of business cycles between...